[chimerax-users] Colors from snapshots

[Tom Goddard]

Hi Christophe,

  I guess you are saving the image with the Snapshot icon on the toolbar.  The equivalent command is shown in the Log panel

	save /Users/goddard/Desktop/image1.png supersample 3

It is probably the "supersample 3" option that is fading your colors.  That option says make the image 3 times bigger and then average over 3 x 3 pixel bins to obtain smoother edges.  If instead you use

	save myimage.png

I believe you will get identical colors to those you see on the screen.

  Maybe I should add some snapshot options to the preferences panel and I could let you choose whether you want supersampling.  On a Mac retina display the snapshot icon makes an image with half the resolution shown on the screen -- could also have an option to up the resolution.  Probably better to just fix it so it uses the screen resolution.

	Tom



> On Jan 28, 2020, at 8:12 AM, Christophe Leterrier <christophe.leterrier at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I wonder why the colors in the snapshots (and movies) from ChimeraX are always washed-out compared to the colors I get live in the viewer. Attached is a screenshot with the viewer on the left, the corresponding snapshot on the right: one can see how the snapshot is desaturated compared to the viewer. From my limited tests it is the case when saving as both PNG and PPM, and I wonder if this could be corrected. I could saturate the screenshots afterward but it doesn't seem right to me to grossly mess with color levels post-hoc given how stunning the shaded rendering from ChimeraX are.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Christophe
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